Page 49 - Governing Congo Basin Forests in a Changing Climate • Olufunso Somorin

General Introduction and Research Setting
situated (social, political, economic and cultural). More importantly, whichever
way institutions exist, crucial for different forms of environmental governance 1 are the political and economic relationships that institutions embody and
how these relationships shape identities, actions, and outcomes (Jagers
and Stripple, 2003; Agrawal, 2005; Lemos and Agrawal, 2006). Additionally,
institutions constrain behavior as a result of processes associated with three
institutional pillars: (i) the regulative, which guides action through coercion
and threat of formal sanction; (ii) the normative, which guides action through
norms of acceptability, morality and ethics; (iii) and the cognitive, which guides
action through the very categories and frames by which actors know and
interpret their world (Ostrom, 1990; Scott, 1995; Paavola, 2007). In its regulative
form, Jepperson (1991 p.145) argues that institutions can be usefully viewed
as performance scripts that provide “stable designs for chronically repeated
activity sequences,” deviations from which are counteracted by sanctions or
are costly in some manner. In its normative form, institutions can be formally
sanctioned rules of a society which provide expectations, stability and meaning
essential to human existence and coordination (Vatn 2005).
In this thesis, I will be considering the different forms of institutions relevant for governing adaptation and mitigation in the Congo Basin. Specifically, I will be considering how institutional elements such as rules, norms, and values at global to local levels regulate and/or structure adaptation and mitigation strategies at different stages of the policy process (agenda setting, design, implementation) and how they shape their governance outcomes as responses to climate change. Analytically, the focus on institutions in the thesis is in three main forms. The first relates to the existing institutions in the forest and environmental sectors of the Congo Basin, which have potential to shape the governance processes of adaptation and mitigation in the region. I call this the institutional setting. Secondly, given that no specific formal institutional framework currently exists for both adaptation and mitigation in the Congo Basin, the thesis focuses on the rule-making process conducted by the actors involved as well. This is what I call institutional arrangements. Thus, the institutional dynamics of the governance process of adaptation and mitigation in the Congo Basin will be analysed based on this mix of institutional settings and arrangements. Thirdly, given the nature of adaptation and mitigation as sub-regimes of the climate debate, with each having its own institutional processes, the thesis considers an interplay of
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